Once again we see the Great Author resorting to his usual time-killing tricks. They just can’t skip to the part where they do whatever they’re going to do at the Silver Grill, oh my heavens no. Instead he’ll eat up most if not all of the week by having the characters TALK ABOUT going to the Silver Grill. Which was firmly established days ago. Forget glacial, this thing is moving at the speed of human evolution now. Every time you think he’s found the slowest gear he drops it down another few notches, it’s unbelievable. If there’s a story to be told, BanTom will sidestep around that story until it ain’t no story no more.

He has this brand new character, an old sci-fi actor from the 1950s no less. And all he can muster up for this character is the most banal chatter imaginable. No back story, no personality, just annoying banter and premise-flogging. One day he’ll be doing one of those puff-piece interviews again and he’ll mention the story he did recently about the actors from those wonderful old sci-fi serials on the 1950s he enjoyed so much as a toddler and you’ll say to yourself, “what? Oh, yeah…THAT piece of crap”.

Watch the hand there, Mr. Mason “Not that type of Bi” Jarr! It’s to early for the porno parody of this shitty movie. The crew of “Starsucks Bones : A Space Gay-dessey” will be casting you and Cliff Anger soon enough. Specially since you already have ready made porno names.

I love how these two just assume that it was lack of publicity that accounts for the low turnout. I like to imagine this is Batiuk’s own mental excuse when nobody shows up to sign copies of “Lisa’s Story”.

He provides Cliff with no schedule or itinerary and then makes him get into full costume on set, Cliff surely assuming he would be shooting his scenes for the film. Nope, Mason springs the news of an immediate photo shoot at some restaurant with zero relevance to anything on a wholly unsuspecting Cliff and then shoves him through a dingy Cleveland alleyway into a decades-old limousine.

I suppose you could argue that the “studio” is pulling this crap on Cliff, not Mason, but I won’t buy that for a minute. Based on everything we’ve seen, Mason IS the studio. Mr. Director is the only person we’ve seen involved in the Starbuck Jones film who has not been explicitly been hired by Mason.

So we’re to believe that the “Silver Grill(e)” event was set up without requiring any of the “Junior Spacemen” to pre-register. They would just show up. So the original “Starbuck Jones” serial would now have to be sufficiently famous and popular to assure that Cliff and Mason wouldn’t be suffering the (well-deserved) fate Les is over in Crankshaft.

Speaking of Crankshaft – We are now retconning a closer connection between Westview and Centerville, making the Funky cast’s lack of familiarity with the ex-Mud Hens pitcher far less plausible.

And a scary thought with all of this retconning going on – If Les is doing a book tour for “Fallen Star” are we going to be subjected to an appearance by not-dead Lisa too? Will Crankshaft veer into an alternate timeline where she doesn’t die?

Just caught up on Crankshaft…so we jump from Jfff time traveling to a young Les Moore? So in Centerville, anybody can just open a business in an area zoned residential? Batty gets to ruin two strips with his tripe.

The writings of the asylum are not on bathroom walls, but on the comics page.

It’s great how his hand has that white margin. It’s like someone at the Syndicate was about to hit “send” to all the accounts then suddenly thought, “whoah, that big black splotch of his back also has the black glove bleeding into it… TB got sloppy again, let me do a quick photoshop around the edge of the glove so readers will realize there’ a hand there…”

So why aren’t they doing this at ComiCon again? And why isn’t Mr. Anger being kept in the loop about anything??Did it ever occur to Jarr that maybe Anger isn’t in the mood to deal with hundreds of loser fanboys??

@hitorque – In the Funkyverse, middle-aged comic book geek manchildren are the elite. The Silver Grill caters to their refined and wealthy demographic.

It’s like BizarroLand or Opposites Day. T-Bats has, for the most part, stopped writing a comic about high-schoolers or about “young adults” or about his own flabby middle age and shifted the strip into simple wish fulfillment and pipe dreams. In the Funkyverse, he can be a succcessful author and his clumsy Starbuck Jones and laughably puerile Amazing Mr. Sponge can be revered pop culture icons.

I’m rather hoping they are being kidnapped by the men in black but that is a bit too much to hope for.
and if I’m reading the google correctly the Silver Grille is located in a local casino so a lot of those folks could end up distracted and spend their time at the slot machines (find the lure of gambling very elusive)